New York 22
April 2002Please Check Against
Delivery

Mr. Chairman

I would like at the outset to
congratulate you and the other members of the Bureau of the Committee on
Information on your re­election this year to steer the work of the Committee
during its twenty-fourth session. We pledge the delegation of Egypt's full
cooperation with you and the other delegations in order to crown the work of
this important session with success and achieve the positive results that we
all desire to enhance the information policies of the United Nations and to
support the capabilities and effectiveness of the Department of Public
Information in carrying out its valuable activities. I would also like to take
this opportunity to extend our thanks to Mr. Shashi Tharoor, the Interim Head
of DPI, for the efforts he is undertaking and for the comprehensive
presentation he provided to the Committee.

Mr. Chairman

The delegation of Egypt has
considered the six reports presented by the Secretary-General on the
various aspects of the UN's information activities. While it associates itself
with the statement delivered by the delegation of Venezuela on behalf of the G-77
and which addressed all the issues that reflect the priorities of the Member
States of the Group concerning the activities of the organization in matters
related to information, the delegation of Egypt would like for its part to
address a number of specific points in which it finds importance in
highlighting:

First:

The Committee on Information
managed during its last twenty-third session to adopt a comprehensive and
balanced resolution reflecting the broad consensus among Member States on the
various fields that must receive priority in the information activities of the
UN and the wide degree of trust in and support of the DPI by all delegations.
While we hope that the work of this session will lead to reaching a similar
positive resolution resulting from a constructive process of negotiation among
all interested delegations, we also find ourselves obliged to express our deep
regret towards the approach of some delegations that had previously accepted
what had been agreed to in this Committee and later attempted to obstruct this
agreement during its translation in the proposed budget for the DPI for the
2002-2003 biennium within the Fifth Committee. These delegations
surprised us with their extremist positions and numerous maneuvres to
circumvent what the Committee on Information had endorsed by re-opening
the discussion of the UN's information policies in another forum that is only responsible
for examining the financial - and not substantive - aspects of
these policies; this is a matter which we hope will not re-occur this
year.

Second:

The report presented by the
Secretary-General entitled “We-orientation
of UN activities in the field of public information and communications " reflects
a clear and honest description of the situation of the DPI and the position it
finds itself in to respond to the numerous and varied mandates and directives
issued to it by the General Assembly over the last years. The report also
contains a number of preliminary findings that were possible to ascertain in
the context of the comprehensive review that
the Secretary-General was requested to conduct on the performance and
effectiveness of the Department.

While we noticed that these
findings are confined solely to those aspects where the performance of the
Department can be improved, as described in paragraph 9 of the report, we also
affirm that addressing the substance of the report should not aim to restrict
the activities of the Department, discontinue some of the programs it is
carrying out or withhold the financing required for them; on the contrary,
addressing the report should result in the reaffirmation by this august
Committee of its support for those programs that we all place importance in and
that represent for the Member States an indispensable priority. And while we
are aware that the comprehensive review the
Secretary-General is attempting to prepare will not be finalized until
next May and will only be presented during the fifty-seventh session of
the General Assembly, I nonetheless would like to stress three fundamental
points which I hope will be taken into consideration in this context:

1.The Committee on Information, as the primary legislative
body mandated to make recommendations to the General Assembly on the
performance and policies of the DPI, must first examine the comprehensive review before any other
forum proceeds to address its results or take action based on them. This approach
will afford the Committee the opportunity to examine the performance and
effectiveness of the Department in all its aspects - be they positive or
where there is room for improvement - in a comprehensive and coordinated
manner that allows Member States to adopt a broad range of general
recommendations and specific directives that will form the basis of the
Department's work in the forthcoming period.

2.We must all refrain from examining the comprehensive review from one narrow
angle that is based solely on financial considerations; thus our response to
what has been put forward by the Secretary-General in paragraph 58 of his
report is represented in the need to elevate the two factors of "political
importance" and "results benefited" above all other considerations
that may be used, and both of these may be precisely ascertained from the clear
mandates adopted by the General Assembly and the evaluations that may be
conducted on the size of the target audiences for the UN's information
activities.

3.There must be an acceptance of the need to enhance the
capabilities of the DPI to implement those programs that have proven their
effectiveness whether in the sense of them meeting the wishes of the general
membership of the UN or by them reaching a broad segment of beneficiaries
throughout the world. I would like here to single out, for example, the UN's
live radio broadcasting program that reaches tens of millions of listeners in
Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, as well as the Press Releases
issued by the Department on formal meetings of the bodies and committees of the
UN and which the vast majority of delegations in this organization depend upon.

Third:

My delegation has considered the
report of the Secretary-General on the development and enrichment of the
UN's web site on the internet in all official languages. While we welcome the
initiative of the Secretary-General to put forward a set of new ideas in
response to the successive requests of the Committee on Information on this
matter, we would also like to affirm a number of points that the report has
accepted, at the forefront of which is that the multilingual development of the
UN web site was not achieved at the desired pace due to the lack of resources
required for it. And if we address the specific recommendations contained in
the report, we would stress very clearly our objection to option two to develop the web site - which will depend
primarily on the capacity of the Departments' producing the information to
provide it in the six official languages - since this approach will only
increase the disparity between the English and French languages on the one hand
and the other official languages on the other.

On the other hand we welcome the first option that is based on
translating all the information available on the web site in English into the
other official languages. While we accept that some delegations may have
reservations on endorsing this option, and while we are ready to show the
necessary flexibility to consider the compromises contained in paragraphs 34
and 35 of the report, we would also like to stress that the full linguistic
parity that the General Assembly has repeatedly called for in its successive
resolutions will not be attained unless everyone displays the required political
will and accepts that reaching this goal can only be achieved through the
provision of the additional financial allocations needed for it. I also find it
essential here to remind the Secretariat of the importance of carefully
implementing paragraph 57 of GA resolution 56/64 which requested the Secretary-General
to ensure the equitable distribution of financial and human resources allocated
to the UN web site among the six official languages, that is until the GA takes
its decision on the most suitable approach to achieving full linguistic parity
on the site.

Fourth:

Concerning the integration of
information centres with the field offices of the United Nations Development
Program, the delegation of Egypt would like to express its appreciation for the
care displayed by the Secretariat in `respecting the specific criteria and
guidance approved by the General Assembly for the integration of these centres
as referred to in paragraph 11 of the Secretary-General's report on this
subject. We also welcome the efforts undertaken by the Secretariat to restore
those resources that have previously been reduced to a number of information
centres especially in developing countries. We also look forward to the
examination by Member States of the proposal put forward by the Secretary-General
to consider the viability of maintaining those centres whose host governments
do not provide rent-free premises for, especially when it comes to those
centres present in the five developed countries referred to by the Secretary-General
and whose rent expenses account for 40 percent of the non-staff resources
allocated to all UN information centres around the world.

Fifth

The delegation of Egypt is always
mindful to reaffirm the importance it attaches to the DPI's adherence to the
full implementation of all the information activities endorsed by the General
Assembly in the special program for Palestine until a just and lasting solution
to the Palestinian question is achieved. There is no doubt that these
activities gain increased significance during these difficult times in which
more light must be shed on the suffering of the Palestinian people as a result
of the occupation and enhancing the awareness of world public opinion of the
legitimate rights of the Palestinians for self-determination and the
establishment of their independent state. I would also like in this context to
once again express our appreciation for what the Department is undertaking in
organizing the annual training program for Palestinian journalists and we look
forward to it continuing - and even enhancing - its efforts in this
arena during the forthcoming period.